East of Time (6 page)

Our audience, electrified, responded with thunderous applause. And as the curtain came down, we, the young actors — and doubtless many members of the whole assembly — were struck by the ingenuity of Sholem Aleichem's tale. In spotlighting an irrational tradition, he had exposed the cruel logic that could flow like a dark undercurrent beneath the lofty human impulse to redemption.

 

 
Bible and Bund
 

Jewish Antiquity, virtually the code-name in our school for
Tanach
, was taught by Falk Melman, a bald, bespectacled, unassuming gentleman, an astute scholar of incredible patience and a tendency to be manipulated by his students — all of which had earned him the unkind epithet ‘Shmelke'.

Nearly seventy years have passed since I sat in his class, yet I haven't forgotten how deftly Melman banished religiosity from the Bible. How skilfully he proved that the
Tanach
, the narrative of the Jewish people, is essentially a piece of secular literature, forced by Orthodoxy into the straitjacket of religion. How carefully he explained that, despite our school's socialistic ideals, it was not Marx's economics but the visions of our biblical prophets which were at the heart of humanity's universal dream.

The
Tanach
, said Melman, was a compilation of folktales, parables, myths and history. Often harmoniously contradictory, it contained the whole world of antiquity, and its position at the centre of all great literature and ethics was indisputable. On one occasion, to reinforce his argument he began to read a short tale by a poet unknown to us.

‘I am hostage to a dream,' it began, ‘a dream of a galaxy of words orbiting a book on fire which the flames cannot consume. The orbit is divided into three separate spheres: the first ring, closest to the flames, beams with effulgence. The second, further away, twinkles with little sparks of light. The third, remote, lies in darkness. I notice how, at the ring of effulgence, men are walking in and out. One of them, a laughing tear in his eye, is a certain Sholem Aleichem, fiddler of Anatevka. He is speaking with a younger, aristocratic figure, who wears a black cape, walks with a cane, and is called Peretz, progenitor of Bontsha the Silent. “You know,” says the old man, pointing his finger at the burning book, “if not for its flames, men would
spend their whole lives in darkness.” The other looks at him uncertainly. “But reading the flames the wrong way,” adds the fiddler, “causes blindness.”'

 

 
Zev the Storyteller
 

We met on the eve of the great vortex — I, the teenage scribbler, and he, the published storyteller in his mid-thirties. I had plucked up my courage and given him a story of mine to read; a few weeks later, to my astonishment, he asked me to his home for a cup of coffee — an accolade seldom bestowed by a famed writer on a boy like me, for it was a time when a penman was equal to a prince, especially in a land where nearly a quarter of the populace could not read or write.

Zev was a tall, imposing man, neatly dressed, with an Adam's apple that protruded restlessly from his thin throat. He wore a pince-nez on his sharp nose, and had the air of one forever surprised by everything that took place in the world.

‘Well, young man,' he began in a sing-song voice, after taking a sonorous sip of his hot coffee. ‘Language does not give birth to a story; a story must give birth to language.'

Deaf to what was probably a tactful opening for the criticism of my effort that would follow, I barged in excitedly. ‘Is it not a little like mathematics?' I offered. ‘Most people are familiar with the numbers of our, so to speak, mathematical alphabet, yet very few of them are mathematicians.'

‘Not entirely,' he nodded, ‘though you're not far off the mark. In my opinion, a good storyteller must be at home with his people's folklore, their legends, lullabies, their superstitions. And more than anything, he has to know from whence he came, and to where he is going. Without these fundamentals, he might compose very nice, even clever tales, but they will be
as enduring as an epitaph written with one finger on the surface of a lake. Let me tell you a little story from chassidic literature.

‘A youth came to see the sage known as the Baal Shem Tov — a mystic who could discern a ray of sun in the darkness of night, who could detect the Messiah's footfall at the beginning of time, who proclaimed that the mind which dwells in one's heart creates a better man than that which reigns over one's head. “Master,” pleaded the boy, “I have a great need to pray to God, yet I cannot read the prayer-book. My parents were poor, and there was no money for schooling.”

‘The Baal Shem Tov smiled warmly at the boy. “You cannot read, but perhaps you know the letters of the alphabet?”

‘“Yes, that much I do know, sir.”

‘“Good. Then listen, my young friend. Open up your soul while zealously reciting those letters of the alphabet, from beginning to end, and I promise you that the Almighty Himself will compose for you a psalm which cannot be found in any prayer-book.”'

At this point, Zev stopped and drew another loud sip of his now cold coffee, before continuing. ‘A good writer,' he said, ‘carries his ideas like precious birds in his heart's cage. His tale is the sky of their freedom.'

He paused, and stooped down until his eyes were level with mine.

‘And remember — the writer may not be the one who announces to himself,
I am about to write a story.
He is the one to whom, during a sleepless night or in the midst of the busiest day, the story rises up and demands:
Write me! '

 

 
Yiddish Rhapsody
 

As a girl you were already a young maiden, ripening into motherhood. To your starving children you unbuttoned your generous bodice and opened your heart, that they might receive nourishment and sustenance from your spirit.

And yes, you loved them, mother-bride. And your childpoets, their jealous wives by their sides, lay with you.

Ah, how quickly you matured into a song of love, of peace, of ironic wit. You became the dread of the mighty, and little wonder. They knew well your music's rallying power — you were a stubborn flag standing tall and fluttering against the unjust winds.

Even when shadows grew long and the world became a den of thieves, forcing your children out into the night, you remained in their midst — you were a beacon of light for as long as the dark prevailed.

When the sun rose anew and the remnants slowly returned to their homes, you still walked among them singing psalms of grace. In time they settled their meagre belongings and found comfort — and they shut their doors in your face.

I knew of a poet who dreamt he had walked behind your hearse. Later, as the coffin, still open, was lowered into the pit, he was heard to mutter:

‘We will pay a terrible price for this...'

 

 
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